Alan Cassels, co-author of Selling Sickness: How the World’s Biggest Pharmaceutical Companies are Turning Us All into Patients entertained and informed the audience at the Science Journalism Conference by reciting the following example of poetic journalism.

Who says you can’t write poetry about science?

We’d like to solicit more from the audience: Haikus? Limericks? A ballad or two?

Peter and Paul are Pre-diseased
Two little boomers there, sitting on a wall:
Pre-Hypertension Peter, Pre-Diabetes Paul.
Of course, the two aren’t really sick, it hasn’t come to that,
but as the two get older, something’s sure to lay them flat.
So they go in for their frequent tests, to have pokes and scans and measures.
They’re doing it to preserve their health, despite the small displeasures.
They feel that they’re now taking care, and standing on their guard.
When your body is just pre-diseased, it isn’t all that hard.
Besides, they say, it’s all a road paved with good intentions,
but an ounce or yes, a pound of cure is worth billions in preventions.

(From Cassels’ latest work The ABCs of Disease Mongering, available December 3, 2007)

Check out Alan Cassels project Media Doctor, a website that tries to improve medical news reporting.